Whenever you are confronted with an opponent. Conquer him with love.
-Ghandi
This entry is based on the links… I sat up a good part of the evening pondering what I am seeing unfold in the USA. Actually, this is an old story as my friend Tomas told me this morning on the phone from his place on the East Coast. I have to agree. Thanks Tomas for putting it in perspective. Wakey Wakey!
So I am asking you to consider a novel approach for the here and now. Resist by building your community, and owning/sharing your lives. Reach out and give aid to those in need, and look to living is such away as to be a blessing on the green earth and not a curse.
I pray that we realize that we are always enfolded in community, and not just human community. Being here is being a part of the whole, not separate from it.
We can let go of the past and build a future for those that come after. Witness the truth, and resist by the power of Love.
What we are witnessing is another face of the madness, and its need to be control. Be like water in the palm of the hand, be like mercury. The future will be made with Love, I promise.
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm
On The Menu
The Only Links You Will Need
Coyote and the Monsters of the Bitterroot Valley
Poetry Of Resistance
_____________
The Only Links You Will Need:
Gonzales Questions Habeas Corpus: More Fun With the Constitution
____________
Nonviolence is a weapon of the strong
-Ghandi
____________
Coyote and the Monsters of the Bitterroot Valley
This story was recorded from a great-great-grandmother whose name means “Painted-Hem-of-the-Skirt.” In the summer of 1955, she was the only person on the Flathead Reservation in western Montana that even an interested interpreter could find who knew the old stories of their people.
The Bitterroot Valley is in western Montana.
After Coyote had killed the monster near the mouth of the Jocko River, he turned south and went up the Bitterroot Valley. Soon he saw two huge monsters, one at each end of a ridge. Coyote killed them, changed them into tall rocks, and said, “You will always be there.”
There the tall rocks still stand.
Then he went on. Someone had told him about another monster, an Elk monster, up on a mountain to the east. Coyote said to his wife, Mole, “Dig a tunnel clear to the place where that monster is. Dig several holes in the tunnel. Then move our camp to the other side.”
Coyote went through the tunnel Mole had made, got out of it, and saw the Elk monster. The monster was surprised to see him.
“How did you get here?” he asked. “Where did you come from?” The monster was scared.
“I came across the prairie,” lied Coyote. “Don’t you see my trail? You must be blind if you didn’t see me.”
The monster became more scared. He thought that Coyote must have greater powers than he himself had.
Coyote’s dog was Pine Squirrel, and the Elk monster’s dog was Grizzly Bear. Grizzly Bear growled at Pine Squirrel, and Pine Squirrel barked back.
“You’d better stop your dog,” said the monster. “If you don’t, he’ll lose his head.”
The dogs wanted to fight. Grizzly Bear jumped at Coyote’s dog. Pine Squirrel went under him and killed him with the flint he wore on his head. The flint ripped Grizzly Bear. Bones and flesh flew everywhere.
“Look down there,” said Coyote to the Elk monster. “See those people coming along that trail? Let’s go after them.”
He knew that what he saw was Mole moving their camp, but the monster could not see clearly in the tunnel. Elk monster picked up his shield, his spear, and his knife. “I’m ready,” he said.
After they had gone a short distance along the trail, the monster fell into the first hole. Coyote called loudly, as if he were calling to an enemy ahead of them. The monster climbed out of the hole, tried to run, but fell into one hole after another. At last Coyote said to him, “Let me carry your shield. Then you can run faster.”
Coyote put the shield on his back, but the monster still had trouble. “Let me carry your spear,” Coyote said. Soon he got the monster’s knife, also–and all of his equipment. Then Coyote ran round and round, shouting, “This is how we charge the enemy.”
And he jabbed the monster with the monster’s spear. “I have the enemy’s warbonnet!” he yelled. He jabbed the monster four times, each time yelling that he had taken something from the enemy. The fifth time he jabbed the monster, he yelled, “I have stripped the enemy.” Then he said to the Elk monster, “You can never kill anyone again.”
Coyote went on up the Bitterroot Valley. He heard a baby crying, up on a hill. Coyote went up to the baby, not knowing it was a monster. He put his finger in the baby’s mouth, to let it suck. The baby ate the flesh off Coyote’s finger, then his hand, and then his arm. The monster baby killed Coyote. Only his skeleton was left.
After a while, Coyote’s good friend Fox came along. Fox stepped over the dead body, and Coyote came to life. He began to stretch as if he had been asleep. “I’ve slept a long time,” he said to Fox.
You’ve been dead,” Fox told him. “That baby is a monster, and he killed you.”
Coyote looked around, but the baby was gone. He put some flint on his finger and waited for the baby to come back. When he heard it crying, he called out, “Hello, baby! You must be hungry.”
Coyote let it have his flinted finger to suck. The baby cut himself and died.
“That’s the last of you,” said Coyote. “This hill will forever be called Sleeping Child.”
And that is what the Indians call it today.
After Coyote had left Sleeping Child, Fox joined him again and they travelled together. Soon Coyote grew tired of carrying his blanket, and so he laid it on a rock. After they had travelled farther, they saw a storm coming. They went back to the rock, Coyote picked up his blanket, and the two friends moved on. When the rain began to fall, he put the blanket over himself and Fox. While lying there, covered by the blanket, they looked out and saw the rock running toward them.
Fox went uphill, but Coyote ran downhill. The rock followed close on Coyote’s trail. Coyote crossed the river, sure that he was safe. Spreading his clothes out on a rock, he thought he would rest while they dried. But the rock followed him across the river. When he saw it coming out of the water, Coyote began to run. He saw three women sitting nearby, with stone hammers in their hands.
“If that rock comes here,” Coyote said to the women, “you break it with your hammers.”
But the rock got away from the women. Coyote ran on to where a creek comes down from the mountains near Darby. There he took some vines–Indians call them “monkey ropes”–and placed them so that the rock would get tangled up in them. He set fire to the monkey ropes. The rock got tangled in the burning ropes and was killed by the heat.
Then Coyote said to the rock, “The Indians will come through here on their way to the buffalo country. They will play with you. They will find you slick and heavy, and they will lift you up.”
In my childhood, the rock was still there, but it is gone now, no one knows where.
Coyote left the dead rock and went on farther. Soon he saw a mountain sheep. The sheep insulted Coyote and made him angry. Coyote grabbed him and threw him against a pine tree. The body went clear through the tree, but the head stayed on it. The horns stuck out from the trunk of the tree.
Coyote said to the tree, “When people go by, they will talk to you. They will say, ‘I want to have good luck. So I will leave a gift here for you.’ They will leave gifts and you will make them lucky–in hunting or in war or in anything they wish to do.”
The tree became well known as the Medicine Tree. People from several tribes left gifts in it when they passed on their way to the buffalo country that is on the rising-sun side of the mountains.
In my childhood, the skull and face were still there. When I was a young girl, people told me to put some of my hair inside the sheep’s horn, so that I would live a long time. I did. That’s why I’m nearly ninety years old.
As the interpreter and I were leaving Painted-Hem- of-the-Skirt, she bent low and made a sweeping movement around her ankles and the hem of her long skirt. Then she said a few words and laughed heartily. The interpreter explained: “She says she hopes that she will not find a rattlesnake wrapped around her legs because she told some of the old stories in the summertime.”
She had laughed often as she told the tales, but I feel sure that her mother would not have related them in the summertime. “It is good to tell stories in the wintertime,” the Indians of the Northwest used to say. “There are long nights in the wintertime.”
_____________
What do I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea.
Ghandi
_____________
Poetry Of Resistance…
self evident
by ani di franco
yes,
us people are just poems
we’re 90% metaphor
with a leanness of meaning
approaching hyper-distillation
and once upon a time
we were moonshine
rushing down the throat of a giraffe
yes, rushing down the long hallway
despite what the p.a. announcement says>
yes, rushing down the long stairs
with the whiskey of eternity
fermented and distilled
to eighteen minutes
burning down our throats
down the hall
down the stairs
in a building so tall
that it will always be there
yes, it’s part of a pair
there on the bow of noah’s ark
the most prestigious couple
just kickin back parked
against a perfectly blue sky
on a morning beatific
in its indian summer breeze
on the day that america
fell to its knees
after strutting around for a century
without saying thank you
or please
and the shock was subsonic
and the smoke was deafening
between the setup and the punch line
cuz we were all on time for work that day
we all boarded that plane for to fly
and then while the fires were raging
we all climbed up on the windowsill
and then we all held hands
and jumped into the sky
and every borough looked up when it heard the first blast
and then every dumb action movie was summarily surpassed
and the exodus uptown by foot and motorcar
looked more like war than anything i’ve seen so far
so far
so far
so fierce and ingenious
a poetic specter so far gone
that every jackass newscaster was struck dumb and stumbling
over ‘oh my god’ and ‘this is unbelievable’ and on and on
and i’ll tell you what, while we’re at it
you can keep the pentagon
keep the propaganda
keep each and every tv
that’s been trying to convince me
to participate
in some prep school punk’s plan to perpetuate retribution
perpetuate retribution
even as the blue toxic smoke of our lesson in retribution
is still hanging in the air
and there’s ash on our shoes
and there’s ash in our hair
and there’s a fine silt on every mantle
from hell’s kitchen to brooklyn
and the streets are full of stories
sudden twists and near misses
and soon every open bar is crammed to the rafters
with tales of narrowly averted disasters
and the whiskey is flowin
like never before
as all over the country
folks just shake their heads
and pour
so here’s a toast to all the folks who live in palestine
afghanistan
iraq
el salvador
here’s a toast to the folks living on the pine ridge reservation
under the stone cold gaze of mt. rushmore
here’s a toast to all those nurses and doctors
who daily provide women with a choice
who stand down a threat the size of oklahoma city
just to listen to a young woman’s voice
here’s a toast to all the folks on death row right now
awaiting the executioner’s guillotine
who are shackled there with dread and can only escape into their heads
to find peace in the form of a dream
cuz take away our playstations
and we are a third world nation
under the thumb of some blue blood royal son
who stole the oval office and that phony election
i mean
it don’t take a weatherman
to look around and see the weather
jeb said he’d deliver florida, folks
and boy did he ever
and we hold these truths to be self evident:
#1 george w. bush is not president
#2 america is not a true democracy
#3 the media is not fooling me
cuz i am a poem heeding hyper-distillation
i’ve got no room for a lie so verbose
i’m looking out over my whole human family
and i’m raising my glass in a toast
here’s to our last drink of fossil fuels
let us vow to get off of this sauce
shoo away the swarms of commuter planes
and find that train ticket we lost
cuz once upon a time the line followed the river
and peeked into all the backyards
and the laundry was waving
the graffiti was teasing us
from brick walls and bridges
we were rolling over ridges
through valleys
under stars
i dream of touring like duke ellington
in my own railroad car
i dream of waiting on the tall blonde wooden benches
in a grand station aglow with grace
and then standing out on the platform
and feeling the air on my face
give back the night its distant whistle
give the darkness back its soul
give the big oil companies the finger finally
and relearn how to rock-n-roll
yes, the lessons are all around us and a change is waiting there
so it’s time to pick through the rubble, clean the streets
and clear the air
get our government to pull its big dick out of the sand
of someone else’s desert
put it back in its pants
and quit the hypocritical chants of
freedom forever
cuz when one lone phone rang
in two thousand and one
at ten after nine
on nine one one
which is the number we all called
when that lone phone rang right off the wall
right off our desk and down the long hall
down the long stairs
in a building so tall
that the whole world turned
just to watch it fall
and while we’re at it
remember the first time around?
the bomb?
the ryder truck?
the parking garage?
the princess that didn’t even feel the pea?
remember joking around in our apartment on avenue D?
can you imagine how many paper coffee cups would have to change their
design
following a fantastical reversal of the new york skyline?!
it was a joke, of course
it was a joke
at the time
and that was just a few years ago
so let the record show
that the FBI was all over that case
that the plot was obvious and in everybody’s face
and scoping that scene
religiously
the CIA
or is it KGB?
committing countless crimes against humanity
with this kind of eventuality
as its excuse
for abuse after expensive abuse
and it didn’t have a clue
look, another window to see through
way up here
on the 104th floor
look
another key
another door
10% literal
90% metaphor
3000 some poems disguised as people
on an almost too perfect day
should be more than pawns
in some asshole’s passion play
so now it’s your job
and it’s my job
to make it that way
to make sure they didn’t die in vain
sshhhhhh….
baby listen
hear the train?
—-
What She Said
by Lisa Suhair Majaj
“They don’t have snow days in Palestine, they
have military invasion days.” (International
Solidarity Movement activists, describing
Palestinian children’s lives under Israeli
military occupation.)
She said, go play outside,
but don’t throw balls near the soldiers.
When a jeep goes past
keep your eyes on the ground.
And don’t pick up stones,
not even for hopscotch. She said,
don’t bother the neighbors;
their son was arrested last night.
Hang the laundry, make the beds,
scrub that graffiti off the walls
before the soldiers see it. She said,
there’s no money; if your shoes
are too tight, cut the toes off.
This is what we have to eat;
we won’t eat again until tomorrow.
No, we don’t have any oranges,
they chopped down the orange trees.
I don’t know why. Maybe the trees
were threatening the tanks. She said,
there’s no water, we’ll take baths next week,
insha’allah. Meanwhile, don’t flush the toilet.
And don’t go near the olive grove,
there are settlers there with guns.
No, I don’t know how we’ll harvest
the olives, and I don’t know what we’ll do
if they bulldoze the trees. God will provide
if He wishes, or UNRWA, but certainly not
the Americans. She said, you can’t
go out today, there’s a curfew.
Keep away from those windows;
can’t you hear the shooting?
No, I don’t know why they bulldozed
the neighbor’s house. And if God knows,
He’s not telling. She said,
there’s no school today,
it’s a military invasion.
No, I don’t know when it will be over,
or if it will be over. She said,
don’t think about the tanks
or the planes or the guns
or what happened to the neighbors,
Come into the hallway,
it’s safer there. And turn off that news,
you’re too young for this. Listen,
I’ll tell you a story so you won’t be scared.
Kan ya ma kan – there was or there was not –
a land called Falastine
where children played in the streets
and in the fields and in the orchards
and picked apricots and almonds
and wove jasmine garlands for their mothers.
And when planes flew overhead
they shouted happily and waved.
Kan ya ma kan. Keep your head down.
This poem was a finalist in the 2004 War Poetry Contest sponsored by Winning Writers. Copyright is reserved to the author.
About the author: Lisa Suhair Majaj, a Palestinian American, has published poetry and creative nonfiction in World Literature Today, Visions International, South Atlantic Quarterly, The Women’s Review of Books, The Atlanta Review, The Poetry of Arab Women, The Space Between Our Footsteps: Poems and Paintings from the Middle East, Unrooted Childhoods and elsewhere. She has also co-edited three collections of critical essays.
—–
Sons and Daughters of Baghdad
by M. JUNAID ALAM
The intent here is to impose a regime of Shock and Awe through delivery of instant, nearly incomprehensible levels of massive destruction directed at influencing society writ large
–Excerpt from Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance
Sons and Daughters of Baghdad
Sons and Daughters of Baghdad:
The hour of your liberation draws near
Stand in shock and awe
At the strength of our much-burdened shoulders.
Sons and Daughters of Baghdad:
The hour of your liberation draws near
Watch as your homes and buildings burn
Cower as the earth around you shakes
Cry as your windows smash and shatter
Run and flee as our armored forces gather
Sons and Daughters of Baghdad:
The hour of your liberation draws near
Watch the skies for the first signs of your freedom:
Cruise missiles
Electricity fizzles
Microwave bombs
21,000 pound
Laser-guided
Radar-guided
And God-guided munitions
To bring your democracy to fruition.
Sons and Daughters of Baghdad:
The hour of your liberation draws near
We extend towards you our white hand
Once embraced by many in vain:
Indian, African, Vietnamese,
And washed clean of their colored red stain.
Sons and Daughters of Baghdad:
The hour of your liberation draws near
Spread the good news to the hospitals
To the cancer wards
To the 500,000
Lying quietly in their tiny coffins
And to those among you
Who will soon join them.
Sons and Daughters of Baghdad:
The hour of your liberation draws near
Rest assured–your fate is secured
Prepared by the Messianic and the Chosen
Inspired by the liberators of Palestine:
By tanks, settlers, bulldozers,
By starvation, torture, curfews
By occupation, apartheid, ethnic cleansing
By 1948
And 1492.
Sons and Daughters of Baghdad:
Shock and Awe is here
Prepare your eulogies, your epitaphs
For the hour of your liberation draws near.
M. Junaid Alam
—-
A Moment of Silence for 9/11
By Emmanuel Ortiz, 9/11/02
Before I start this poem, I’d like to ask you to
join me in a moment of silence in honor of those who
died in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon last
September 11th.
I would also like to ask you to offer up a moment of
silence for all of those who have been harassed,
imprisoned, disappeared, tortured, raped, or killed in
retaliation for those strikes, for the victims in both
Afghanistan and the U.S.
And if I could just add one more thing…
A full day of silence for the tens of thousands of
Palestinians who have died at the hands of
U.S.-backed Israeli forces over decades of occupation.
Six months of silence for the million-and-a-half Iraqi
people, mostly
children, who have died of malnourishment or
starvation as a result of
an 11-year U.S. embargo against the country.
Before I begin this poem, two months of silence
for the Blacks under Apartheid in South Africa,
where homeland security made them aliens in their own
country.
Nine months of silence for the dead in Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, where death rained down and peeled back
every layer of concrete, steel, earth, and skin and
the survivors went on as if alive.
A year of silence for the millions of dead in Viet Nam
– a people, not a war – for those who know a thing or
two about the scent of burning fuel, their relatives’
bones buried in it, their babies born of it.
A year of silence for the dead in Cambodia and Laos,
victims of a secret war … ssssshhhhh … Say nothing
… we don’t want them to learn that they are dead.
Two months of silence for the decades of dead in
Colombia, whose names, like the corpses they once
represented, have piled up and slipped off our
tongues.
Before I begin this poem, an hour of silence for El
Salvador …
An afternoon of silence for Nicaragua …
Two days of silence for the Guetmaltecos … None of
whom ever knew a moment of peace in their living
years.
45 seconds of silence for the 45 dead at Acteal,
Chiapas.
25 years of silence for the hundred million Africans
who found their graves far deeper in the ocean than
any building could poke into the sky.
There will be no DNA testing or dental records to
identify their remains.
And for those who were strung and swung from the
heights of sycamore trees in the south, the north, the
east, the west … 100 years of silence …
For the hundreds of millions of indigenous peoples
from this half of right here,whose land and lives were
stolen, in postcard-perfect plots like Pine Ridge,
Wounded Knee, Sand Creek, Fallen Timbers, or the Trail
of Tears.
Names now reduced to innocuous magnetic poetry on the
refrigerator of our unconsciousness …
So you want a moment of silence?
And we are all left speechless
Our tongues snatched from our mouths
Our eyes stapled shut
A moment of silence
And the poets have all been laid to rest
The drums disintegrating into dust
Before I begin this poem,
You want a moment of silence
You mourn now as if the world will never be the same
And the rest of us hope to hell it won’t be.
Not like it always has been.
Because this is not a 9/11 poem
This is a 9/10 poem,
It is a 99 poem,
A 9/8 poem,
A 9/7 poem
This is a 1492 poem.
This is a poem about what causes poems like this to be
written.
And if this is a 9/11 poem,
Then this is a September 11th poem for Chile, 1971
This is a September 12th poem for Steven Biko in South
Africa, 1977
This is a September 13th poem for the brothers at
Attica Prison, New
York, 1971.
This is a September 14th poem for Somalia, 1992.
This is a poem for every date
that falls to the ground in ashes.
This is a poem for every date
that falls to the ground in ashes.
This is a poem for the 110 stories
that were never told.
The 110 stories that history
chose not to write in textbooks.
The 110 stories that
CNN, BBC, The New York Times, and Newsweek ignored.
This is a poem for interrupting this program.
And still you want a moment of silence for your dead?
We could give you lifetimes of empty:
The unmarked graves
The lost languages
The uprooted trees and histories
The dead stares on the faces of nameless children.
Before I start this poem
we could be silent forever
Or just long enough to hunger,
For the dust to bury us.
And you would still ask us
For more of our silence.
If you want a moment of silence
Then stop the oil pumps
Turn off the engines and the televisions
Sink the cruise ships
Crash the stock markets
Unplug the marquee lights,
Delete the instant messages,
Derail the trains, the light rail transit.
If you want a moment of silence,
Put a brick through the window of Taco Bell,
And pay the workers for wages lost.
Tear down the liquor stores,
The townhouses, the White Houses, the jailhouses,
The Penthouses, and the Playboys.
If you want a moment of silence,
Then take it on Super Bowl Sunday,
The Fourth of July
During Dayton’s 13 hour sale
Or the next time your white guilt fills the room
where MY beautiful people have gathered.
You want a moment of silence
Then take it now,
Before this poem begins.
Here, in the echo of my voice,
In the pause between goosesteps of the second hand,
In the space between bodies in embrace,
Here is your silence
Take it.
But take it all.
Don’t cut in line.
Let your silence begin at the beginning of crime.
But we, Tonight
We will keep right on singing
For our dead.
by Emmanuel Ortiz 9.11.02
“Where There’z Fear, Freedom Diez.
Where There’z Peace, Freedom Flyz.”
___________
Whenever you have truth it must be given with love, or the message and the messenger will be rejected
